He That Made The Ship To Go
by duathkaimelar
Summary: Jack knew the sea, and if he knew anything better than the sea, he knew ships.


**He That Made the Ship to Go  
by duathkaimelar**

_Under the keel nine fathom deep,__  
From the land of mist and snow,__  
The spirit slid: and it was he  
__That made the ship to go.  
__The sails at noon left off their tune,  
And the ship stood still also.  
_-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Jack knew the sea, and if he knew anything better than the sea, he knew ships.

Jack considered himself lucky for all of the ships he'd had a chance to captain throughout the years – each and every one held a different spirit, a different aura. Each and every one lulled back and forth quietly on the sea, but with a different rocking motion. Jack knew that ships had personalities, just as much as people, and though Jack had made accords with them all, he'd never made partnerships.

Except with the Pearl.

The Pearl spoke to him, in the quiet of the night, while rocking gently on the ocean, cutting smoothly through the water. The Pearl would quiet under his touch, would yield to his hand, would accept his guidance in a storm. Jack made it safely through storms on other ships just as he'd made it safely through them on the Pearl – but he felt as though he was a part of the storm on the Pearl, and if the ship was a part of them – and he was guiding himself and his crew through a piece of himself, rather than nature's rage.

Jack had seen the Pearl move under the command of another, and he was convinced that she hadn't run as smoothly. The Pearl deserved better than what he had seen under Barbossa.

Jack had never truly felt connected to anything in his life, had never truly loved – except for one, and nothing else felt so right. Jack wouldn't spend more than a decade of his life dedicated to anything he didn't love.

--

It was a routine business that Will came to enjoy just as much as he'd learned to enjoy working in his forge. Will's escapades on the Black Pearl and the Interceptor had taught him the preliminary knowledge for crewing a ship, but it was captaining the Dutchmen that truly showed him the full ropes. He was lucky that the Dutchmen's crew knew what they were doing, and that Bootstrap was more than willing to teach Will anything he didn't know, because Will was certain that this job would be a whole lot harder otherwise.

Will could think of plenty of other places he would rather be than on the Dutchmen, but it wasn't as though he had a choice, so he tried to make the best of it. Will had spent many days being angry and full of regret and self-pity, but such emotions lead nowhere as it is, especially when one is trapped on a ship in the middle of the sea.

So Will had taken to his normal attitude in life – he made the best of what he had, he learned quickly, and he learned to take pride in his work. Even on the Dutchmen, he had to make his time worth something, had to believe there was something he could take some joy in, and he certainly wasn't finding it in ferrying souls, though it did give him some satisfaction to ferry on some who were long overdue, and set free those who had been tortured by Davy Jones' neglect.

But truly learning the inner workings of the Dutchmen – becoming to know his ship better than he knew himself – there was more than just pride in that, and after a while Will believed he finally understood why Jack had been willing to give up so much, even what wasn't his to offer, to get the Pearl back.

Will became so caught up in the Flying Dutchmen and in catching up with his duties that it would be a good three years before he came into contact with the living again, and in that time, he grew to understand a lot more about Jack Sparrow than he ever thought he would.

Will wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.

--

Anamaria loved the freedom.

She missed Jack's old crew sometimes – a majority of the crew Jack took upon his ship could be crude and immoral, leaving Gibbs and Cotton the only ones beside Jack himself that Anamaria ever really trusted – but she did miss them. Crudeness and immorality put aside, months spent away at sea with a group of people demanded a certain degree of camaraderie, at the least.

When the opportunity finally presented itself and Jack had commandeered a ship that Anamaria deemed worthy, it was a harder decision for her to make than she would have liked. Anamaria wouldn't hesitate to call her and Gibbs friends, and she sometimes felt like she needed to stay to watch over Jack – the man needed a keeper - and there was also the fact that Anamaria had come to love and respect the Pearl just as much as anyone, but she had a hard time truly caring what happened to the rest of the crew, and in the end, Anamaria knew that Jack and Gibbs would be all right.

If nothing else, Jack and Gibbs would take care of each other, and she would regret not taking the chance.

She bid farewell to her friend and her captain and was on her way, finally captain of her very own ship, off to a number of ports in an effort to find a respectable crew. And Anamaria loved it, and it wasn't very long before she decided she would not trade her life for a thing anymore. Anamaria had always been envious of Jack, for what he had, and the magnitude with which one could become one with a ship, and become attached to it, was not lost on her. Anamaria took pride in her ship and how it was run. She took pride in herself for taking care of it.

Her ship gave her a sense of purpose and something to love and care for that would not pass judgment on her, and she couldn't ask for anything else.

--

Barbossa enjoyed the challenge.

Barbossa had to admit, the Black Pearl was by and large the best ship he had ever captained, and he highly doubted anything would change that. Yet after all was said and done, it didn't hurt him to give up the Pearl to Jack nearly as much as it would have hurt Jack to not be captain of the ship, and despite the rough time he always had and always would give Jack, he was happy to step down. Barbossa could take just as much pleasure in fixing up a lesser ship than the Pearl.

Fixing a ship up right – sailing her through the clearest skies and the worst storms – trusting something so powerful to bear him safely across the untamable seas – this was where he found his pride and his power. A ship's initial credentials did not matter to him. The ship's performance, however, did, but Barbossa had an uncanny talent for turning any ship into something respectable for a pirate.

Events throughout Barbossa's life had shifted much of his priorities, but the value of a ship was not one of them. If anything, he understood the value of something reliable even more than before.

Barbossa couldn't tame the sea, even if he would ever want to – but taming ships, that was something else entirely. And really, leaving the Pearl to the only pirate who really was a match for it was setting him free to other ships, and he was grateful for it.

--

Elizabeth was still a little caught up in the wonder, if she was honest with herself.

She'd only captained a ship for a short while, but the small taste she had been given was enough to tease her, to haunt her senses for months after.

It had only been a while, but it had been enough. It had been enough time for her to grow attached, it had been enough time for her to realize the responsibilities, the hardships, the joys. She'd been afraid for herself, for the crew, and for the ship during the storm.

Elizabeth suspected that if she hadn't been so caught up in the situation, so careful of the responsibilities that had been placed upon her, and so afraid for Will's life as well as her own, she would have appreciated the time she had been given more. For she had finally been given the true, full taste of captaining a ship. She'd been given a taste of the power, the challenge, the freedom. The experience haunting her afterwards was worse, after all, because she had been given a taste of the past and current lives of a woman she had always respected, a man who had earned her respect, a man who would always remain somewhat of a mystery and the man whom she loved more than life itself.

She would never ask for more than she was given with Will, because she knew that what she had been given was a gift, and she was in debt to another for it. But sometimes she wished she didn't know what it was like, sometimes she wished she didn't _understand_ just what Jack and Will were living because the taste was left bitter in her mouth, and she felt more than a little lonely for it.

**End**


End file.
